Thoughts about meditation

• Meditation is your personal space. It’s your personal sandbox and there is no need to follow any specific template for meditation
• Each of us has a different experience in meditation. Your experience of meditating can, will and should be different than mine. So it makes no sense for me to tell what to expect from meditation. You can completely disagree with what I'm saying and we both will be right.
• The best way to learn the practise of meditation is to ask someone who meditates every day to do it with you daily for a couple of weeks. It greatly helps to meditate with someone in the initial few months. I meditate twice everyday; once alone and once with a group of people.
• But remember that in the long run, meditation is a single player game. If you’re dependent on someone for your meditation, you will likely not be able to master it yourself.
• In simplest terms, meditation is a stress release process. The stress can be in form of thoughts, emotions, physical stress etc. When you get in the rhythm of meditation, this process becomes voluntary and effortless
• Observe all the thoughts that come during meditation. If it helps, engage briefly with them, but then let them go to have other thoughts enter your mind. Repeat the process.
• Think of it like standing on a railway platform with many trains passing through. You don’t have to catch any of them, you just have to acknowledge that they’re passing
• You may deploy multiple techniques during the same meditation session
• Its perfectly okay to fall asleep some times while meditating. There is no need to feel guilty or embarrassed about it.
• You can never go backwards in meditation. You can feel that you’re not achieving anything substantial in the first few days, months and perhaps years. But that’s equivalent of going sideways, not backwards.
• There is no right or wrong technique to meditate. You can meditate while sitting, lying down, keeping your eyes open. You can also meditate while doing a chore — as long as you give your mind the space that it needs.
• You don't need ambient setting, low lighting, apps, noises, any of these things to meditate. Each of them are helpful, especially when you're trying to put up the habit, but none of them are mandatory. You can literally meditate in the middle of a crowded train and still transcend perfectly.
• Don't strive to have a 'perfect' meditative session. Disruptions are normal. Some times your phone will ring while meditating. Somebody may come to your door. Your child or pet may seek your attention. It's alright to tend to these disruptions as they imitate life. Such disruptions may feel annoying in the beginning, but you can learn to embrace them as a part of your meditation itself.
• Meditation, in some ways, is a workout for your mind. Some like walking, some like doing cardio, some like doing weights, some like swimming etc. Your preferred workout can be different than others and that’s okay
• Meditation has a high entry barrier. In my experience, it takes at least 60-90 days to condition your mind to meditate twice everyday. Think of it like climbing a 50 feet wall. Most people give up before climbing that high. But once you get on the top, you realise that the next step in just a feet below you.
• Most institutes that teach 'trademarked' meditation techniques are cults. Any one who tries to convince you that their way of meditation is the “right” way of meditating is fooling you. The right way to meditate is what your mind feels and what your body concurs with.
• While meditating alone, slotting your meditation as a part of your daily productivity process works better than setting a time for it. For example, it’s harder to miss meditation if you slot it after shower and before you start work, instead of setting a calendar invite for 9:30 am everyday
• Meditation should never feel like a chore like washing dishes. There will be days when you don’t feel like washing dishes and you’ll skip them. It will be the same with meditation. Instead, meditation should be something that you get accustomed to doing effortlessly — like breathing.
• Why you meditate on any given day or moment can be for completely different reasons -
  • Some days you want to be focused
  • Some days you want to be creative
  • Some days you want to be empathetic
  • Some days you are anxious and want to relieve the anxiety
  • Some days you are angry
  • Some days you are looking for answers
• No mantra is mandated for meditation. You can use Rama, Allah, Jesus, Gurunanak, Om, or nothing at all. You can use anything that aids your meditation, even if that mantra is ‘Microsoft Excel’. Likewise, you can recite a verse, count numbers, observe your breath, observe your body - everything is okay.
• Try to learn as many meditation techniques as you can. It will help you understand which ones you are most comfortable with and which ones you can apply in your way to achieve a specific objective from your day's meditation (focus, creativity, peacefulness etc)
• You can be thankful to god or to a guru if that helps in your meditation, but it’s not mandatory. Meditation is not a religion.
• 100 days and counting, I have realised that any positive effects of meditation will never be in the form of first order consequences and it is counterintuitive to expect as such. For example, if I expect that meditation will directly improve my anger issues; it won't happen. In the long run, I can hope that meditation will help me empathise with people that make me angry, that meditation will make me a kinder person and that meditation will equip me with a framework (like breathing exercises) to maturely deal with my anger issues.